


團圓 | To Gather [In a Circle]

by virdant



Series: 吃飽了嗎? | Have you eaten your fill? [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Food, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Gen, Hotpot, Jedi, Jedi Appreciation (Star Wars), Jedi Culture, Jedi Culture Respected, hunger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25302634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virdant/pseuds/virdant
Summary: The first meal that Obi-Wan learns to make is hotpot.It is the first meal that Obi-Wan learns to make: the warmth of his friends, his family, and the warmth of a full belly assuring him that all is well.It is the strongest memory he carries with him.
Relationships: Dooku & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Yoda, Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: 吃飽了嗎? | Have you eaten your fill? [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832875
Comments: 57
Kudos: 363





	團圓 | To Gather [In a Circle]

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to rose & alanna, for supporting me in my many twitter threads about how the jedi are good and obi-wan deserves. especially thanks to rose who very helpfully read the fic before its posting.
> 
> * * *
> 
> 團圓; tuan-yuan: to gather [in a circle]

* * *

The first meal that Obi-Wan learns to make is hotpot. 

Not soup or stew, despite their similarities. Obi-Wan rotates through kitchen duties like the rest of the initiates, but his tasks are small and simple. Scooping lentils into bowls. Stirring soups when asked. Washing dishes. Obi-Wan does not learn how to cook until long after he has learned how to make hotpot.

Hotpot is a simple dish. There’s barely any skill needed, to make it. A pot of boiling broth is placed on a burner. Platters of vegetables and thin-sliced meats and seafoods prepared, still raw. And then, seated around the bubbling pot, the meats and vegetables and seafoods are dipped into the broth, cooked by the heat, and then pulled out and eaten. There are sauces, sometimes. There is rice, to accompany the food. After all the meats and vegetables are eaten, noodles are cooked in the remains—the broth warm and thick with the flavors of all of the foods that had been cooked in it.

But hotpot is not just the preparation of food.

It is one of Obi-Wan’s strongest memories of his initiate years. Bant pressed closed to his side. Luminara calm and patient. Quinlan practically buzzing. Bruck fights him for every slice of meat, squabbling from the other side of the pot, his chopsticks cracking against Obi-Wan’s as if they’re dueling every time he reaches into the pot. But Obi-Wan wouldn’t have it any other way. He piles fish onto Bant’s plate so she doesn’t have to reach. He offers Luminara the first choices of tofu. He keeps Quinlan’s plate full, so he’ll never have to reach for the communal tongs. Hotpot is community more than food. The warmth of sitting in a circle, together.

It is the first meal that Obi-Wan learns to make: the warmth of his friends, his family, and the warmth of a full belly assuring him that all is well.

It is the strongest memory he carries with him.

\---

It becomes a tradition after missions.

Master Qui-Gon’s skills in the kitchen are limited to making tea. He is excellent at it. Master Qui-Gon keeps an encyclopedic amount of knowledge about every type of tea leaf in his head, knows exactly what temperature to bring the water to, how long to steep each leaf. Obi-Wan would suspect it had something to do with the living force, if it weren’t for the fact that Master Qui-Gon’s knowledge in the kitchen is limited to only tea leaves, and nothing else.

But even Master Qui-Gon knows how to make hotpot.

After missions, their kitchen is empty. Master Qui-Gon requests food from stores—mostly vegetables and plant-based protein. He goes to Master Yoda’s quarters to request the portable burner and comes back with frog spawn and swamp moss to add to the broth, and sometimes Master Yoda himself to insist on their addition to the pot. Obi-Wan lays out plates around the low table, pulls cushions close for easy reach.

They sit opposite from each other. On the times that Master Yoda joins them, he sits between them, his ears twitching as he slides swamp moss—for flavor—into the broth. Master Qui-Gon eats without any sign of discomfort, and Obi-Wan learns more about negotiation from trying to keep Master Yoda from adding frog spawn to the pot than from any other lesson that Master Qui-Gon teaches him. He practices his manners from a dozen different planets at the table, under Master Yoda’s amused eye and Master Qui-Gon’s steady gaze.

Other meals, Obi-Wan goes to the commissary or cooks himself. But after missions, he sits across from Master Qui-Gon, steam curling in the air between them. Master Qui-Gon fills his plate with leafy vegetables, with tightly capped mushrooms, with the soy-based protein he prefers to meats. Obi-Wan keeps the pot full, so they never have to wait for more food.

They do not talk, much, but Obi-Wan remembers: the warmth of the steam against his face as he bends over the pot, the drops of boiling broth sharp against the bare skin of his hands when he dropped the vegetables in too quickly, and Master Qui-Gon’s hands as they keep Obi-Wan’s plate full.

Obi-Wan knows a mission is over when his belly is full.

\---

All initiates are given kitchen duty; the Force is the first language they learn to speak with, but food is a close second. They serve with open hands: the knights, the masters, the padawans, the monks and nuns and every member of the Order. But they learn to serve as initiates, in a bustling kitchen. They feed the hungry that walk through their halls, scrub dishes clean afterwards. 

“Warm, are you?” Master Yoda asks them, after hotpot. “Full?”

They nod. Obi-Wan thinks of the warmth of his friends, his family, and how the warmth is matched by the knowledge that he is not hungry.

“Good,” Master Yoda says. “To have eaten is to know that all is well.” 

In the kitchen, Obi-Wan offers that same warmth to the people passing through. He ladles out soups so the tired knights have something warm to fill them with. He chops vegetables so the padawans will grow strong. He scrubs dishes until his hands are red after the masters have eaten enough to ease the exhaustion they carry with them. He is an initiate, but he has come to serve. He can serve like this.

Obi-Wan carries that lesson with him. When he takes Anakin as his padawan, he keeps his kitchen stocked. He ensures that Anakin never goes hungry. He cooks soups and orders vegetables from stores and scrubs dishes.

He asks Anakin, every day, “Have you eaten yet?”

And, he prepares a pot of broth on the portable burner from Master Yoda’s rooms. He lays out platters of meat and vegetables—because Anakin is a growing boy, and Obi-Wan will see him grow well, grow strong, grow into a knight. He sits across from Anakin, and keeps the pot full, keeps Anakin’s plate filled, keeps Anakin fed.

The Force is the first language that Obi-Wan learned to speak, the brush of one mind against another. But food is the second language that Obi-Wan learned to speak with, and he talks, he talks, he talks.

\---

The war drags on and on, and Obi-Wan is never full.

He checks supply lines every day, ensuring that no troop goes hungry. There are ration bars and nutritional supplements and it is enough that nobody is hungry, but Obi-Wan is never full. 

He knows what it means to be full: the warmth of his friends and family around him, the knowledge that all is well. But all is not well. The galaxy is falling apart around him, and he is never full anymore. He eats, he keeps his men fed, but he is never full.

He stands before Count Dooku, and his hands are steady. As steady as they have always been, when he sat before Master Qui-Gon and the two of them ate until they were fed. But now, he stands before the man who had once been his grandmaster with their lightsabers in hand, and his stomach is empty and he is hungry. He wants to sit before a boiling pot of broth and eat until he is full. He wants the warmth of his family pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, wants his hands red from scrubbing pots and pans, wants to fill plates full, see the children fed, see the knights go to bed with their bellies full, see the tension in the masters’ shoulders ease with one strain gone from their life.

He shared a meal with Master Dooku once. He had still been a padawan, and when Master Qui-Gon had gone to Master Yoda’s rooms to borrow the portable burner, he had come back with more than Master Yoda, but Master Dooku as well. The four of them had sat around the burner, and Master Yoda had added swamp moss to the pot before anybody could stop him and Master Dooku had eaten it without any change in his expression. Master Dooku kept Master Yoda’s plate filled, frowned at Master Qui-Gon’s choices of vegetables laid out in platters, lectured him on his choice of protein, and kept Obi-Wan’s plate piled with protein even as Master Qui-Gon tried to fill it with vegetables. 

But they are not eating now, and Obi-Wan has not been full in months.

“Master Kenobi,” he says.

He is hungry. He has never shared a meal with Count Dooku. 

He is beginning to forget what it means to be full.

\---

It’s rare to be at the temple. It’s even more rare that they are all at the temple, with the war still raging around their ears. Obi-Wan stands in his quarters and stares at the empty kitchen for a long time.

Before the war, he always kept his kitchen stocked. Anakin had been a growing boy. But Anakin is a Knight now, has his own quarters, and Obi-Wan spends more time on a ship, leading a war, grief filling his belly.

But they are all here, now.

He goes to Master Yoda’s quarters to borrow the portable burner, but Master Yoda is out on a mission of his own. He ends up in Mace’s quarters, and Mace finds his burner at the back of a cupboard, covered with dust. He requests vegetables and meats from Stores, goes to pick them up from an initiate who beams up at him and offers him the packages with both of their hands wide open.

He comms Anakin and Ahsoka.

Anakin makes his excuses, but Ahsoka shows up. Her teeth are sharp as she smiles. She hasn’t had hotpot in years, she says. They sit across from each other, and the steam wafts into the air between them. Obi-Wan fills her plate with meat. Padawans are still growing, and Ahsoka needs more meat than even a hungry Anakin. His face is flush with the steam as he bends over the pot, and Ahsoka’s voice is bright as she reminisces about her time in the creche.

The last time she had hotpot, she had still been an initiate.

When they’ve eaten their fill of meat and vegetables and the platters are empty, Ahsoka brings out the package of noodles she brought. She pours them into the pot and cooks them in the soup that remains from their meal. Obi-Wan used to do this with Qui-Gon, and the memory catches him by surprise.

“Master Obi-Wan?” Ahsoka asks, and Obi-Wan looks up. “I think the noodles are ready.”

“So they are, Padawan,” Obi-Wan says.

She ladles the noodles into a bowl for him, her hands calm from years of kitchen duty. Obi-Wan closes his eyes as he eats. They do not say anything. 

For a moment, his hunger subsides.

\---

He sits in his cave in Tatooine, a bowl in his hands. There is no pot of boiling broth before him—Tatooine is too hot for soups and stews, too dry to justify an entire pot of liquid to cook with.

He closes his eyes and eats.

He eats every meal alone, now.

**Author's Note:**

> Obi-Wan Kenobi and Jedi culture has always been East-Asian inspired, and so much of East-Asian culture articulations of love come through food and communal eating. Sharing food, serving food, offering food. Articulations of love and care have always been deeply entwined with food, eating, and serving for me. So I wrote about it.
> 
> I'll probably write more about food because I love writing about food; in anticipation, I've made a series to collect all of my feelings about Obi-Wan, the Jedi, and food as an articulation of love. There will probably be more fics in there soon. Probably.  
> 
> 
> ❤️ Enjoyed it? Try the following options:
> 
>   * Follow me on twitter [@virdant](http://virdant.twitter.com)
>   * [Like & retweet on twitter](https://twitter.com/virdant/status/1283653525767991296)
>   * Comment and kudo below
> 



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